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In last week’s gaming column, I blasted the practice of steep undercutting on the auction house. I did, however say that I had a couple of exceptions to that rule.

The first is price controls. I have a few markets on my server where I have essentially instituted price controls. The price is not allowed below a certain point, nor is it allowed above a certain point. How? Why?

(No, I'm not doing THAT much math...)

The how is fairly simple. I monitor the markets closely, and if the prices get below the floor I have set, I buy everything beneath that floor. Then, if prices start getting above my price cap, I start selling at that price cap. It’s not 100% control, of course, but I find that in these markets, prices tend to stay in the ranges I set.

The why is a little different. Certainly, there’s profit. This is a fairly classic case of buy-low/sell-high, but given the markets I’ve chosen, it’s a lot of work for not much gold. The justification for spending that effort has a lot to do with what those markets are.

They tend to be the materials necessary for leveling certain professions. Over half of them are herbs (for alchemy and inscription), but I also do this for various metals, leathers, and enchanting materials. The reason I got into this was my annoyance at trying to level those professions. As I worked my way up through the various materials necessary (from the low level peaceblooms up to through felweed and goldclover), I was fairly annoyed that many of the necessary items could not be found on the auction house.

Yes, I could have gone out and farmed them myself, and in some cases I did, but escaping that kind of grind was one of the reasons I got into serious WoW auctioneering in the first place. Fortunately, I discovered that it was really just a matter of timing. One week there might be virtually no mageroyal at all, just a few sprigs held out for astronomical prices, i.e. a hundred gold each, but then the next week the market would be flooded by cheap mageroyal for mere silver pieces. So, through much of my profession leveling, it was sprints and waits as the auction house supplies came and went.

Eventually I realized that smoothing out that supply variation could be a nice profit center, but I also realized it could be a public service. Yeah, yeah, play the evil music. The capitalist is trying to justify his greed by saying it’s for the public good. But seriously, it is for the public good.

I buy when someone is dumping. They’ve farmed it and are trying to get cash, or maybe they’re cleaning out bank space and just want to get something more than what the vendors offer. I give them that money. Then, when supply gets tight and some leveler really needs that mageroyal, there I am offering at a reasonable price.

Ah, but what’s that reasonable price?

And here’s where I diverge from my earlier rant against steep undercutting. In other markets, I’d say that the price should be the highest amount someone is willing to pay, but in these markets, I try to stay within reasonable bounds. Now, I’m still making a nice profit, typically 70% to 200%, but I don’t hold out those few sprigs of mageroyal for hundreds of gold. I have the price ranges I have chosen, and if someone has posted for a lot higher, that’s too bad. That market is under price control.

For example, one market I keep control on is briarthorn. I set my buy price to about 1 gold, and I set my sell price range for 2-2.5 gold. Every now and then, someone buys up the entire market and relists it at 10 gold. Well, later that day, I’m back online and posting a decent supply at 2.5 gold. Often, that other guy will promptly buy me out, so then I’ll post some more. Rinse and repeat. Eventually, he gives up as other suppliers (often farmers) come on board and post even further below me. I don’t know if all of his briarthorn ends up dumped on the market days later, or if he just chucks it all the vendor and stomps off all angry.

But the key is that folks who needed that briarthorn were able to get some at a reasonable (though inflated) price, while I made a nice profit in the meantime.

Note: I don’t set my buy/sell prices arbitrarily. Rather, the market does a lot of that for me. When I find I have too much of one item (more of a gut feel than anything mathematic), I lower my buy price. When I can’t get enough of it to maintain a reserve, I raise my buy price. When I’m selling out too fast, I raise my sell price. When I find that too many of my items are coming back unsold, I lower my sell price. That has led to several different price spreads for my various markets, e.g. 0.30 to 1.4, 1 to 2.5, 2 to 5, 2 to 6, 5 to 12, even a 3 to 9.

That last one of 3 to 9 is an odd one (Goldthorn) that is frequently needed in small amounts of 5 to 15 but almost always shows up in sporadic dumps of 60 to 200 at dirt prices. That one has been a real challenge to keep in stock because of how volatile the supply is, and that’s what led to that 3 to 1 ratio. It used to be 2 to 1, but I kept running out, leaving folks at the mercy of that one guy who posts everything at 999.99.99 hoping you’ll click by accident.

So anyway, I do price controls on some key professional leveling markets, and if you’re going to make some profit there, er, I mean, do some public service there, then I think it’s perfectly fine to do steeper undercuts.

(But don’t think it’s all charity and soup kitchens. I make 25% of my overall WoW income from these markets.)

The second area where I think it’s acceptable to do steeper undercuts is a fairly simple one. Namely, we set our prices at what the market will bear. If the cheapest thing out there is ten times the market norm, I’m not going to slip in at 9.999 the market norm. I’ll be wasting my time and my deposit. It’s not going to sell. Instead, I’ll come in at perhaps double or even triple the market norm and hope I snag a sale before everyone else comes back to undercut me.

I’ve been nailed by other auctioneers for that sometimes. Their argument was that the market could truthfully bear that price if only I would let it. One case was for netherweave bags, a staple item for setting up alt characters with enough bag room to level without investing in some of the pricey high level bags. On my server, they had been going for between 9 and 14 gold, and then someone came along, bought everyone out, and relisted for 50 gold. I shot for 19, was bought out, reposted, was bought out again, and then discussion ensued.

His argument was that the market could support that price, and that it did so on other servers. I checked (The Undermine Journal is awesome!), and sure enough, other servers did manage to sell these at 35-60 gold. However, on those servers the material cost was much higher. On my server, I can make a bag for as little as 3.5 to 4.5 gold, but on those expensive servers, I would have been looking at 10-15 gold for materials. Nevertheless, I decided to play ball for a while and convinced a few of my fellow tailors to do likewise. I figured it was worth a shot, but ultimately the price collapsed as more tailors came out of the woodwork and this fellow dumped all his inventory for under the original market prices.

So, yeah, maybe you can raise market prices, but not in one jump and not in a market with a lot of competitors. If you see someone making that jump, my best advice is to price for what the market really will bear and profit while you can from his doomed efforts.

But other than those, I strongly urge you to stick with minimal undercuts. Otherwise, you’re just hastening the race to the bottom with lost profit for everyone.

Posting on Warcraft’s auction house is both simple and complex. You can post one or many. You can make them cheap or expensive. You can be a good citizen, but you can also be a dick. At the root of this is the practice of undercutting your competitors on price to make sure yours sells first. There’s nothing wrong with undercutting. It’s just a tool, and you can use it like a scalpel, a hammer, or grenade.

The Scalpel

In almost all cases, I encourage minimal undercutting. If the lowest price on that piece of armor is 420 gold, price yours at 419.99 gold. Very likely, the next person to come along will price theirs at 419.98. Each successive undercutter shaves off a trivial sum, and the prices stay high.

Yes, high prices are good for sellers. Sorry buyers, I’m in business mostly for myself, not for you. You go run three more daily quests and get back to me with another 50 gold.

The Hammer

I see bigger undercuts all too often. Someone sees that piece of armor priced at 420 gold and decides to whack a chunk off of that and sell for 400 or maybe even 350. There are a few possible reasons for this, but they’re all wrongheaded.

Bad Reason #1: “Round numbers sell better.” This is baloney. The items are sorted by price. Buyers don’t look for the round number. They look for the cheapest. And they’re not waiting for a round number either. They go with the lowest price at the time that they want to buy.

Bad Reason #2: “A bigger price drop will get me noticed.” Again, the buyers don’t care. They just want the cheapest at the moment. The only way it gets you noticed is by your competitors.

Bad Reason #3: “A bigger price drop will keep my competitors from undercutting me.” This is maybe 20% true, but that’s not enough to save it. The truth is that most profitable markets will have multiple sellers, especially towards the end of an expansion. A small fraction of these will be fleeting competitors, just trying the market out, and an aggressive price drop might scare a few of them off. But the majority of your competitors are there to stay, and they’ll be right back, undercutting you by a minimal amount.

Bad Reason #4: “Minimal undercutting is too much work.” Yeah, typing those extra characters is just soooooo hard. I’ll admit there’s a shade of truth to this, and it’s one of the reasons I rarely bother to undercut by 0.0001. But I almost never undercut by more than a single gold. Typing 400 is as many keystrokes as typing 419.

Basically, this level of undercutting is an annoying move, and if you do it repetitively, you will earn the reputation for being a dick. It’s also stupid.

Why?

Because you left money on the table. That’s almost 20 gold you left out here. I wouldn’t care if it were only you, but when I come back to undercut – and believe me, I will be back to undercut – that’s also almost 20 gold that I had to leave on the table. Now instead of selling my item for 419.98, I’m selling it for 399.99.

Get enough of you hammer-heads together, and before long, we’re having the same price war as before except it’s around 200 gold instead of 400 gold. Usually it takes a server shutdown before the prices can rise back up.

So, in short, DON’T DO THIS. Keep with minimal undercuts.

The Grenade

That is, unless you’re trying to blow up the entire market.

Some items sell at very high markup. They cost next to nothing and sell for hundreds of gold. There are lots of competitors working that market, and your only hope for sales is to time your undercuts just before the buyer shows up. It means you’re camping at the auction house, reposting every hour or two to undercut the other five guys who are doing the exact same thing.

One approach to get out of this reposting trap is to nuke the market. Figure out your costs down to the copper. Do what you can to get that price down. Remember to include posting costs and auction house commission costs. Know your down-to-the-bone minimal price.

And then start posting just a little above that.

Suddenly, items that had been selling for 120 gold are now being priced at 10 gold.

Holy hate-mail, Batman, but that’s going to stir up trouble. Competitors will argue with you. People will say you’re ruining the market. People will ask you to play along and bring prices back up. They’ll buy you out and repost at the original prices. In short, they’ll do anything to keep those prices high.

But if you’re committed to doing this, you have to press on. Keep posting at these rock-bottom prices. Sooner or later, your competitors will stop posting their wares. They’ll stop buying you out and realize they have bags full of items they can’t sell. Eventually, you’ll own the entire market. Then start raising your prices. You never get back to the original prices, but with 100% of the market you can sell enough to be making more money than you did before.

I admit this is a serious dick move. Asshole mother-fucking cunt-shitting dick move. (Thanks to George Carlin for that…) But in many ways, the auction house is the ultimate player vs. player arena, and sometimes you decide it’s necessary to be a dick. The biggest proponent of this goes by the moniker “The Greedy Goblin”, and if you read his blog, yeah, he’s a real dick, and apparently anyone who disagrees with him is an idiot living in the world of rainbows and unicorns. (And I would know — by the time you read this, I’ll be holding on to Poonalooey’s mane as we ride across the rainbow fields of Everjoy!)

You want some idea of how much hatred you’ll get for this? Look at how many folks in the book industry (from bookstores to publishers) hate Amazon. Yeah, we’re talking “with the passionate heat of a thousand fiery suns” kind of hatred.

And yeah, you can also say that Amazon is providing a great service to the customers by cutting out all this bloat and middleman profit. I suppose you can also say the same thing about the Greedy Goblin, that he’s trying to bring cheap armor to the masses. Except Amazon at least talks the talk. Greedy Goblins make no bones about being in it for pure profit.

But ultimately, we’re all just playing a game. We’re all here to enjoy ourselves, not to pay the bills or finance our retirement. There really no joy in fucking someone else over, or at least, there shouldn’t be. As the great Wil Wheaton said, don’t be a dick.

Future gaming columns will include the way to beat the Greedy Goblin, thoughts on posting in quantity, some exceptions to my suggestions above, and even an argument for when it’s not so bad to pull a Greedy Goblin.

Hand in hand with the whole buy low sell high mantra comes this little gem that is so rarely employed:

Never buy retail, and never sell wholesale.

How does that fit into World of Warcraft gold-making? Through the two prices we set on products in the auction house: the minimum bid and the buyout price. A buyer can place a bid between those two numbers, and if no one else outbids him, he gets it at the price he bid. This is a great way to buy, but it’s a terrible way to sell.

Buying Wholesale

I frequently see items posted with a spread of 10-20% between the minimum bid and the buyout price. If it’s an item that feeds into one of my various production chains, I usually bid the minimum (or current) bid. Very rarely do I choose to pay the full buyout price in those cases.

After all, I make it a point to have large reserves of my various supplies, and their levels rise and fall with the uneven production and prices of my suppliers. The material I’m purchasing now won’t be sold as a finished product for two to four weeks. I’m in no hurry to snatch this particular bit. I can wait a day or two to see if anyone outbids me. Frequently they do. No worries, there will be more tomorrow.

About the only time I pay the full price in this case is when the full price is so low that it warrants snatching it up now, even though I could try for the lower price of the bid. If it’s cheap enough, I just grab it. Fortunately, I have add-ons that automate most of that logic for me. I set price levels and adjust them according to market price and the size of my current supplies. I typically end up paying about 5-10% less than what is considered to be the bottom market price, and that extra margin goes straight to profit. This is what I call buying wholesale instead of retail.

Not Selling Retail

Meanwhile, I never post items for sale with a spread between the bid and the buyout. Sure, I can understand the temptation to do so. I’m putting down a small deposit to put it up for auction. I can certainly hope to get the full buyout price, but if it doesn’t sell, then I lose that deposit. Wouldn’t it be better to put out a bid price that’s 20% lower so that if someone undercuts my buyout price, I’m still likely to sell it and not lose that deposit?

The problem is that most people going to the auction house are looking for an immediate purchase. If they had the patience to wait on a bid, they would also have the patience to go out and farm or grind for the item. The two exceptions to this rule are 1) high-end bind-on-equip epics where folks are willing to delay if it might save them 10%, and 2) people like me. Everyone else wants to buy it now, and when they come along and see your item, they’re going to just pay the full price and take immediate delivery. If someone has undercut your buyout price, then they’re going to buy his instead, never even looking at your cheaper bid price.

But… but… NO

But still, isn’t it better to sell it to an industrialist like me than let that deposit vanish? I would say yes if, and only if, the spread between bid and buyout is less than the deposit. Otherwise, you’ve effectively lost the deposit anyway, plus whatever further discount you provided me. You sold to me at a wholesale price instead of demanding I pay retail.

So, when you’re posting items for sale, never EVER do this.

Unless you’re one of my suppliers, and then I urge you to keep on giving me extra profit.

Last week I was cruising past 700,000 gold, but instead of being halfway to 800K, I’m down to 650K. Why? Hookers? Blow? Nope. I spent about 100,000 gold on various materials, mostly metal.

All of my various World of Warcraft professions require raw materials that I then turn into more valuable items via the different crafting skills. These raw materials come from the world at large, i.e. ore from outcroppings of rock, herbs from plants, leather from animal skins, etc. I have the ability to gather these myself, but I don’t.

Why? Because it’s boring.

And also, because I don’t have to.

Instead, I simply buy these materials on the open market. Prices rise and fall, supply comes and goes, and I sit on the sidelines with a big pile of cash waiting to snatch it up at the right moment. And this last week was the right moment.

Commodity prices generally move up and down within a band, but there are two kinds of events that cause the price to either spike or plummet, and they’re driven by the absence of farmers and appearance of bots.

Farmers are players like you or me, though for all I know, they might be chained to their computers in an underground Chinese prison. Either way, they grind out the material hunt day after day, putting up with the boredom so that I don’t have to. They post their goods in a chunk every day or two, and the amount posted looks like an amount that could be reasonably farmed in that amount of time. Their presence is fairly steady.

Bots take advantage of API’s and hacks to pump the necessary actions through the user-interface to play the game for them. They gather obscene amounts of raw materials in a short amount of time and then dump them on the market at ever-decreasing prices. Blizzard calls this a violation of their Terms of Service agreement, and they kill the accounts of players caught employing these botting tools. They also beef up the software to keep the bots from working, but like all security efforts, it’s a never-ending battle to plug holes in the dike.

So, how do these push the normal supply/demand out of whack?

Farmers go on vacation or move on to other things, and then there’s a sudden drop in supply. If you have a large supply waiting in the background, you can cash in on a temporary price spike until new farmers are attracted to the market. I see this happen often enough in some markets to actually make decent money smoothing out the volatility, i.e. buy when cheap and plentiful, sell when expensive and rare.

Despite Blizzard’s best efforts, botters eventually find a way through the security, and the market floods with cheap material. Instead of five or six players posting twenty stacks each, one player shows up with six hundred stacks at half the price of the regular farmers. It can take a while for that bloat to be absorbed by the market, but it’s accelerated by people like me, willing and able to slap down thousands upon thousands of gold to grab a good deal while it lasts.

It’s a bit of an ethical quandary when buying from someone you suspect is a botter, because when I do so, I’m rewarding a cheater. I feel a bit bad doing so, but I know I’m not the only one opening his wallet. Eventually, the whole market absorbs their output like a nation of giddy SUV-drivers suckling at the oil spigot of a greedy dictator.

Plus, I can’t say for certain they’re botters. Even Blizzard considers it a tricky measure and only whacks them when it can detect the actual bot software, not merely when they detect the bot’s prolific production.

At least I can be pretty sure the botters aren’t using their ill-gotten gold on ethnic cleansing or terrorism.

Meanwhile, my newfound supply of elementium ore should last me most of the rest of Cataclysm and possibly into the next expansion.

Someone suggested that I blog some of my gaming exploits here as well as my SF/F thoughts since, perhaps, there is some crossover between gamers and SF/F fans. I don’t know if this will be a regular thing or only pop up on the occasional patch day.

But to be clear, my passion for gaming is not in slaying damsels or rescuing dragons or… wait… anyway, it’s not any of those things. My passion in gaming is mostly economic. I want to make money. Well, not real money, but virtual gold.

Now, I’ve been involved in role-playing games since I rolled up my first fighter in 1980. It was Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, first edition. I didn’t immediately launch into advanced finance, but I did spend a lot of time designing castles and figuring out how much they’d cost. My early forays into Traveler quickly devolved into my quest to build a vast and profitable trading empire, and when Ultima Online started up, my first thoughts were around setting up a blacksmithing business.

That’s not to say I’ve never played a character with depth beyond his pocket, because I have. There was Rolnib, the half-orc assassin whose lifelong quest was to rid himself of his orcish nature, purify himself from his evil ways, and take up the holy orders of a paladin. There was Argus, the wizard with the tragic backstory of spoiled love. And Siclari, the wise old elf who was truly a youngster with an invented past, desperately hiding his true name, Boweezle Appleprick. Also Terrin, the paladin who made a better bad cop than a good cop. And of course, Rhys, the illiterate ranger who could debate the nature of chaos for hours.

But the money… ah yes, the money. The siren call of the virtual economy was strong, and so it’s no surprise that after a couple of years of playing World of Warcraft, I started working that economy in earnest. Actually, the real surprise is that it took me that long, but I will say that the game itself was pretty engaging. So, I started with a blacksmith who also mined. Eventually, I added a tailor, an enchanter, a leatherworker, and so on. I now have one of every profession, but only five of the eleven are fully trained. And then there’s my banker.

Banker is not an official class in World of Warcraft, nor is it a profession. There are no skill or talent points to assign to it, but nonetheless, quite a few of us have characters that we consider to be bankers. My banker is a level-three elven rogue who never leaves the city, but I play that banker more than any other character. Even though I have characters at or near maximum level, this is the one I play the most.

She started off just as a character I left at the auction house in the city so that I could mail her excess loot to sell when I was out in the badlands, but as my main was grinding out the gold to get that epic mount, I decided to do a little speculating. I gave her 100 gold pieces, which at the time was a big chunk of money. The mount I was saving for was going to cost 500 gold, so putting 100 of that at risk was a big deal. Well, it’s been about five years, and I’m just now cruising past the 700,000 gold mark, so I’d say it was the right decision. Certainly there has been some inflation in that time, but not 7000 to 1 inflation.

But what am I doing to generate that gold? Some of it is classic buy-low/sell-high, but the majority of it comes from production aimed at meeting the needs of other players. Careful purchases to keep my costs low combined with doing what I can to raise prices keeps my profit margins reasonable without being obnoxious. Still, most of the products I create give me anywhere from 50% to 200% profit.

The products themselves are usually fairly simple, no rare or epic weapons for me. They’re just little odds and ends that many folks could make for themselves or for a friend, but in low volume it’s a hassle. But in massive volume, that profit adds up. Almost every item I sell is under 300 gold, with many in the 1-5gold range. I don’t think I’ve ever sold something for more than 1000g. It sounds like a lot to manage, and maybe it is, but I’m rarely dealing with more than 70 different items.

It’s crass to say it, but in terms of the World of Warcraft, I have become the 1%, with wealth and income far outstripping the average players. I didn’t do it to be elitist, and once I got that epic mount, I can’t really even say I was doing it for the gold. Seven hundred thousand is an insane amount of gold. There’s not really anything to spend that much money on.

But it’s a score, and I find that virtual economy as engaging a game as any fight against the Lich King. So I keep going. The maximum amount of gold a single character can have is one million gold, and that’s what I’m shooting for. And after that? Who knows? Maybe I’ll work on that second million, or maybe I’ll waste it all the WoW equivalent of hookers and blow.

Anyway, depending on how this goes, I might be documenting the life of this virtual banker here.